The Gentlemen

Writer-director Guy Ritchie is back where he belongs. “The Gentlemen” is, like his early films “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch,” a nasty, twisty, stylish, and darkly comic crime thriller set in England and featuring low-life characters with impenetrable accents. This is a relief after his plodding mis-matches like “Aladdin” and “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword,” though I got a kick out of seeing the poster for his underrated “Man from UNCLE” in this film.

It starts with a bang (a blood-spattered shooting in a pub) and then goes back in time, a story within a story, with Hugh Grant, as someone Ritchie considers even less worthy of respect than murderous, drug-dealing criminals — a sleazy tabloid reporter named Fletcher with a long-lens camera, a friend who can lip-read, and a story he wants to sell for 20 million pounds. Grant himself has had his problems with sleazy tabloid reporters and is clearly enjoying himself tremendously and getting some revenge in the role. His performance is deliciously devastating.

The person he wants to blackmail is Michael Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), an American expat with a highly successful marijuana growing and distribution business. Pearson is trying to sell the business so he can retire, and is about to close on an offer from another American expat drug dealer, the effete Matthew (“Succession’s” Jeremy Strong). They’re in the stage that business types call due diligence, confirming the valuation of 400 million pounds. Michael has another offer, from a thuggish upstart known as Dry Eye (“Crazy Rich Asians'” Henry Golding). His bid is much lower in cash, but he plans to make up the difference with threats.

All of this is well known by Michael’s closest associate, Ray (Charlie Hunnam). But Fletcher, who has shown up unexpected and uninvited in Ray’s home, is relishing the chance to tell the story, even setting it up as though he is pitching a movie, even providing details of film stock and lenses, which the movie we are watching obediently demonstrates, reminding us of the air quotes that keep the bloodiest parts of the story from getting too bleak.

Michelle Dockery, a long way from Lady Mary on “Downton Abbey,” is also having a lot of fun playing Michael’s wife, as tough as he is or tougher, with a Cockney accent and as sharp as her Louboutin stilettos. You could almost see the Lady Mary of 2020 having the same cooperative arrangement with Michael that the other estate-poor gentry do in the film. Some of the twists are not as twisty as they intend and some of the characters are not as colorful as the movie thinks they are, but it is still a welcome return to what Ritchie does best.

Parents should know that this is a crime drama with extended and very graphic violence, many characters injured and killed including young adults with devastated parents, disturbing images, guns, poison, arson, murder, kidnapping, sexual references, drug dealing and overdose, and constant very strong and crude language.

Family discussion: Would you say that there are any good guys in this movie, or at least better guys? Who, and why? What will happen to Michael next?

If you like this, try: “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Get Shorty,” and “Layer Cake”